Currently working on adapting a pair of brackets from a quad Xeon board.

Photo sucks 😒, have no decent camera at the moment so my phone will have to do.

Stay tuned.

Hey m1919

on Xeon Prime what operating system are U using? Could not see it mentioned.
Also what drivers are you running for the quantum obsidian card?

Slot 2 was always an eye catcher.

stano wrote:

Hey m1919

on Xeon Prime what operating system are U using? Could not see it mentioned.
Also what drivers are you running for the quantum obsidian card?

Dual booting Windows 98SE with Windows 2000 Pro.

I'm running KoolSmoky's drivers I found on the www.3dfxzone.it forum.

Finished adapting the quad Xeon board brackets to mount on the ASUS XG-DLS. Still have to change out the heatsinks on my 700/1MB Xeons to a pair of the standard Intel black heatsinks. I currently have a pair of Poweredge heatsinks that won't clear the bottoms of the brackets. Also have to mount two cooling fans to blow air directly across the heatsinks and I should be good to go.

These brackets originally came attached in a two-unit set that I separated and reworked to mount as single brackets. I had to grind down the stubs left over from the connecting struts and also had to grind down the original mounts as they did not match the XG-DLS' hole patterns at all. New mounts were fabricated using scrap plastic from a Bic lighter stand I found, got really lucky with that because it's the same plastic as that used on the brackets; it matches very nicely. The new mounts were attached using JB Weld; the bond seems to be very secure.

I fabricated some backplates from the same plastic used to create the new mounts for the bracket. The original plan I had was to mount directly to the motherboard tray using standoffs for mounting processor brackets on other boards like the MS440GX or Supermicro S2DG* series, but the XG-DLS had a lot of traces close to the mounting holes, so this way seemed safer.

Changed my primary video card to a GeForce 4 Ti4600. You'll also notice I'm still using an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W, even though the XG-DLS has onboard SCSI. The wiring job would have been more cluttered using onboard SCSI and relocating the cable would have obstructed the area I plan to mount a pair of cooling fans in. Only thing I'm not liking on this board is the location of the floppy connector, it's almost right in the middle of the board. It's like they crammed all this shit on to the board and then added the floppy as an afterthought, it's literally the worst position I've ever seen a floppy connector in.

Edit: Actually, I think I can use the onboard Adaptec SCSI and route the cable under the hard drive cages and around the front edge of the case...

This beast definitely deserves a nice cold cathode to show off all that hardware. I'm thinking simple white or amber will look pretty good with the LED fan on the side panel.

I agree with the floppy board position. If you are not going to use it alot
after operating system install I would remove the cable.

By the way I love the obsibian. looks massive...

Wow I just did a search on the Quantum3D since I wasn't very familiar. Found this site which rounds them up:

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/q3d_mercury_brick.htm

I had never heard of the "brick" before - 8 chipsets on a 4 card SLI - what a beast!

tincup wrote:

Wow I just did a search on the Quantum3D since I wasn't very familiar. Found this site which rounds them up:

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/q3d_mercury_brick.htm

I had never heard of the "brick" before - 8 chipsets on a 4 card SLI - what a beast!

Definitely a beast. If I could find the other hardware required to run the "brick" setup, I'd totally buy another 3 of these things.

You mean this gear?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Quantum3D-Obsidian-2- … =item3cca665f2c

not for the faint of heart haha..

tincup wrote:

You mean this gear?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Quantum3D-Obsidian-2- … =item3cca665f2c

not for the faint of heart haha..

Heh, too rich for me right now 🤣.

I was going to ask you 2 questions about your system, but then I realized that you don't have 900mhz chips installed. 🙁

You better update when you get a pair of 900's. *shakes fist*

luckybob wrote:

I was going to ask you 2 questions about your system, but then I realized that you don't have 900mhz chips installed. 🙁

You better update when you get a pair of 900's. *shakes fist*

Heh yeah, I'm still on the lookout for a pair of 900s.

On a second note, here are a couple pics of the rig in it's latest configuration. It's almost done (yeah right 🤣) except for a couple last things. First is the task of swapping the heatsinks on my 700/1MBs out with those on my 550/1MBs. The heatsinks on the 550s are actually the originals that came with my 700s, but as my MS440GX only ran up to the 550Mhz Xeons, I swapped them around.

Unfortunately, there's just one issue I have to deal with to accomplish this task. It seems the heatsinks are now stuck on the 550/1MBs. I removed the screws and was unable to remove the heatsinks. I'm thinking that I might have some luck with running the 550s through some benchmarks etc. to get them nice and warm and then it might be easier. I'm also going to try the string method and see if I can cut through the paste and remove them that way.

The second I need to do is find some kind of spacer to mount between the retention bars and the top of the Xeon cartridges to prevent them from floating free of their sockets over time. Another alternative to this is, if possible, swapping a pair of Gateway P2 Xeon heatsinks in place, as these are a bit taller than the standard Intel heatsinks, and they also have a lip on the upper back of the heatsink that allows the retention bars to make contact and keep them seated. Only issue I have with this solution is that I only have a single Gateway P2 Xeon heatsink on hand.

Lastly, I was also able to route my SCSI cable behind the hard drive cages and up behind the 5-1/4" drive bay up to the top, allowing me to remove the Adaptec SCSI controller and free up the lowest PCI and ISA slots.

m1919,

when you connect the medusa cable to your primary video card and then the 26pin connector to the quantum card the other 15 pin goes to the monitor, right? I assume you get an image at boot up (of the bios for example).

I am asking the question as I got the same card from the seller on ebay and a medusa cable and when I connect the medusa cable from primary vid card to obsidian and finally monitor I do not get an image at all.

stano wrote:

m1919,

when you connect the medusa cable to your primary video card and then the 26pin connector to the quantum card the other 15 pin goes to the monitor, right? I assume you get an image at boot up (of the bios for example).

I am asking the question as I got the same card from the seller on ebay and a medusa cable and when I connect the medusa cable from primary vid card to obsidian and finally monitor I do not get an image at all.

Hmmm. I wonder if the card is bad. How about trying a glide game on the card, but don't connect the Obsidian to your primary card. Start up the glide game and connect the monitor to the Medusa cable and see if there is any image displayed. Sounds like the card is probably bad, but you might as well try that and maybe try moving the card to different PCI slots. Maybe it's not liking where it is on your board. Pretty sure Voodoo2 based cards don't need an IRQ, but might as well try it anyway.

If the cable was bad, you would most likely still get an image, it would just display with some sort of issue like color fluctuation or something similar.

I just tried old unreal and I got no image although I did hear sound, so might be a bad card..
I also tried it in a bx board apart from the Via I used. So I do not think it is a pci issue.

stano wrote:

I just tried old unreal and I got no image although I did here sound, so might be a bad card..
I also tried it in a bx board apart from the Via I used. So I do not think it is a pci issue.

Yeah, it's probably a bad card. 😒

There's what looks to be an s-video out on the card, I'm not sure if that actually is an s-video out or if it's just a similar port, but you can try hooking up a TV to it if you have a cable for that. If it is an s-vid out and you get an image in a glide game, maybe the port on the card is bad, or the cable itself may be defective in some way, but I'm betting it'll probably be an issue with the card.

Swapped my Ti4600 out for a WinFast A350. Also revised some cabling. Moved my fans and fan controller over to the same lead as my hotswap bay so I could free up an extra 4-pin for the card. Also had to slightly revise the cooling fan setup for the Xeons because the new card required space for the 4-pin connector.

I really love the look of the A350. Heat dissipation is also excellent, the entire external casing is used for heat dissipation in addition to the copper heatsink on the die and memory.

The A350 obstructed the first PCI slot, forcing me to shift the SB Live! to the adjacent slot. Not really a problem right now, but it might be if I install something in the last remaining PCI or ISA slot. All slots will be occupied, and I'll have to sacrifice the USB 2.0 card if I want to install something else in the future. The XG-DLS is short one PCI slot because of the way the processor slots were laid out. It's probably the only other major irritation I have with this board in addition to the ridiculous location of the floppy connector.

Considering replacing the northbridge heatsink with something a bit more beefy, not that it runs particularly hot, but I plan on running 112Mhz FSB when I finally find some 900/2Mb Xeons and would like to keep everything running as cool as possible.

Well... on with the hardware porn.

m1919
I would just heatsink paste the n/b heatsink. I do not think that 112 mhz will tax the n/b.

In my abit bx2 board I had it at 135mhz with a 450mhz katmai @ 607mhz. And all I did at the time is just white heatsink paste the heatsink to the nb.

Very nice!